"A widow met him, dark trees o'erhead, Her child and the man just parted-- When home she walked her knife it was red; Swiftly she walked, and muttered, and said, 'The blood rushed fast from a fount full-fed! Ay, the young lord was right "good-hearted!"' III. "When morning wan its first beam shed. It fell on a corpse yet wanner; The great-hearted dogs the young lord had fed Watched, one at the feet and one at the head-- But their months with a blood-pool hard by were red; They loved--in the young lord's manner." There is something about the fierce bitterness here that strongly reminds one of Tennyson's poem of The Sisters, with its weird line-- "Oh! the Earl was fair to see!" From several of very nearly the same purport, we select the following, influenced to choose it, as we own, by the wonderful flow of its measure, as well as its truly Irish beauty. There is a kind of peculiar richness of diction that no other nation on earth ever attains. Every reader of Tom Moore will know what we mean, and recognize a kindred spirit in SEMPER RADEM "The moon, freshly risen from the bosom of ocean, Hangs o'er it suspended, all mournful yet bright; And a yellow sea-circle with yearning emotion Swells up as to meet it, _and clings to its light_. The orb, unabiding, grows whiter, mounts higher; _The pathos of darkness descends on the brine_-- O Erin! the North drew its light from thy pyre; Thy light woke the nations; the embers were thine. II. "'Tis sunrise! The mountains flash forth, and, new-reddened, The billows grow lustrous so lately forlorn; From the orient with vapors long darkened and deadened. _The trumpets of Godhead are pealing the morn:_ He rises, the sun, in his might reascending; _Like an altar beneath him lies blazing the sea!_ O Erin! who proved thee returns to thee, blending The future and past in one garland for thee!" But what we regard as really the finest poem in Inisfail is an apparent, perhaps a real, exception to our rule above stated, that whatever of this poetry pleases us would please as well if divested of its Gaelic form. The charm of this lies in its being so essentially Irish in conception. It is just such an original, bold, wild inspiration as no other body than an Irish clan could without incongruity be made to feel. There is more intense _Irishness_ (what other word will express it?) in it than in all the poems--ay, and half the poets--of this century. We give it with the author's own explanation prefixed: THE PHANTOM FUNERAL.